Support Vector Machines — Lecture series — Dot product cont’d 2
In the previous post I spoke about how to algebraically compute the dot product of 2 given vectors. In this post, we are going to be looking at how to geometrically compute the dot product between 2 vectors.
Learning objective:
Learn how to compute the dot product of 2 vectors geometrically.
Main question:
Consider the 2 vectors in Fig. 1 below, how would you compute the dot product of these vectors in a “geometric” way?
To find the geometric dot product of the two vectors in Fig. 1, you will first have to obtain the angle formed between the vectors as demonstrated in Fig. 2 below and then apply the formula in Fig. 3.
In the next post, I will delve a little deeper into this formula to derive a proof for it and then explain why the geometric approach is equivalent to the algebraic approach in the computation of the dot product.